Rare Book Monthly

BookFinder Tallies the Top Ten Old Books

- by Michael Stillman

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Leading searches for History is Civil War in Pictures, edited by Fletcher Pratt. After all of these years, this terrible internecine war still fascinates us. And second is William Manchester's The Death of a President, about another topic still riveting, the assassination of JFK.

I'm not a follower of Mysteries and Thrillers, but I recognize the author at number 2, Ellery Queen. Calamity Town must go back a ways. Ben Ames Williams' Leave Her To Heaven holds down the top. Popular Science and Technology includes some very familiar names, Carl Sagan, H.G. Wells, and David Attenborough, but number 1 is something called Football Scouting Methods. Anyone know whether author Steve Belichick is related to the New England Patriots' coach?

Atop Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror is a book by Stephen King, as well there should be. This one is Rage. J.R.R. Tolkien employs this category to become the other author with two top ten books. Society and Culture is filled with books unfamiliar to me. The Secret of Perfect Living by James Mangan is number 1, but I prefer the title of number 2, Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming. At number 10 is The New Soldier by someone named John Kerry. Anyone ever heard of him?